Like ghosts, Peter Thiel has long haunted the edge of the Maga movement. As an early Trump supporter, the tech billionaire is often regarded as helping start the political career of former reality TV stars. Since then, the influence of tech billionaires can be felt everywhere on the Maga agenda. Many of Thiel's friends and colleagues have spread throughout the administration, and others can play a key role, which won the win over Trump last fall. Now, Thiel's powerful defense contractor Palantir has also been said to have played an integral role in Trump's deportation machine, especially (according to Trump) targeting American citizens.
Internal news and company information leaked to 404 media suggest that creepy data companies are actively helping the Trump administration identify and find people deported. The socket receives slack messages and messages from the internal wiki, explaining the meaning of the leak:
The leak shows that Palantir’s work with ICE includes producing potential customers for law enforcement to find logistical work for people to deport and track Trump’s massive deportation efforts and provide concrete insights into the Trump administration’s aspirations to leverage data to implement its immigration agenda. Internal communication also showed that Palantir leadership prepared for a potential rebound for employees or outsiders, who wrote FAQs that could be sent to friends or family members who began asking about Palantir’s collaboration with ICE.
One of the projects Palantir is working on for the government is called “Execution Priority and Targets.” It is described as an effort to “accurate images based on existing law enforcement data sets to allow law enforcement officers to prioritize enforcement actions to “support viable prospects with accurate images.” Palantir has received tens of millions of dollars from the program, 404 letters. The company has signed a $95 million contract with ICE, which allows the government to use Palantir's Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. The company said the ICM software allows ICE officials to “record investigative activities that lead to the prosecution of the offender.”
The leak apparently also showed that Palantir told its employees that it was “still committed to “privacy and civil liberties protection,” which seemed a bit like an industrial slaughterhouse, claiming it was still committed to animal welfare. The internal wiki described the company’s attitude toward human rights concerns:
Another section reads: “Palantir is aware of the risks of privacy and civil liberties involved in these task sets and how they are affected by the shift in priorities.” It adds: “Many risks will not be addressed on our means – some risks are structural and must be completely baked in the equation by willingness to participate in these efforts. It is important to note that failures will occur during the disassembly operation.”
I guess some of the risks to civil liberties cannot be helped when your business’s main priority is to make money by helping the government transport people to foreign prisons. Gizmodo contacts Palantir for more information.
The Trump administration has stepped up its deportation efforts in recent weeks, and many are very unusual for many, given that they have no known criminal record and are not due process. The Supreme Court recently issued a vague ruling saying the Trump administration should “promote” the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was recently taken to a prison in El Salvador. The government claims Garcia is a gang member but does not confirm these claims, except for the vague evidence of the 2019 police report, which mentions anonymous allegations against Garcia. Furthermore, despite the government claiming to be deported due to an “administrative error”, the government has no interest in correcting the error.
In a recent press conference, such legally problematic deportation operations could soon target other types of people living in the United States, with Trump claiming he wants to expel U.S. citizens in the same way Garcia was deported. “We always have to follow the law, but we also have native criminals pushing people to the subway, and when they don't look, they hit older people in the head with a baseball bat, which is definitely a monster,” Trump told reporters. “I want to include them.” If Trump's main focus is crime, why the administration is mainly expelling men with criminal records, it's still an open question.
Similarly, Trump's anti-terrorism czar Sebastian Gorka recently suggested that Americans opposing government actions are suffocation from terrorists. “We have people who love America, like the president, like his cabinet, just like the directors who his agents want to protect Americans,” Gorka told Newsmax. “Then there is the other side, on the side of the cartel members, on the side of illegal foreigners, on the side of the terrorists. You have to ask yourself: Are they technically helping them and teaching thin? Because helping criminals and terrorists in federal regulations is a crime.”
Trump and his cabinet's remarks have aroused strong opposition from legal scholars, including many conservatives. As one scholar said, consensus seems to be that the government’s deportation actions are “apparently illegal.” Other critics, such as historian Timothy Snyder, have pointed out that the Nazi phobia during World War II was the transport of professional “regions” that suffered from horror.
